When she was last seen, Modestina Cefai was wearing a pink dress, gold earrings and a faldetta, a traditional women’s head dress that has long gone out of fashion.

According to the original police report of her disappearance she was three feet and seven inches tall, had curled brown hair, dark eyes and a “fresh complexion”.

She was just six when she vanished into thin air at around noon on August 27, 1911, leaving behind an anguished family and a mystery that gripped generations of Gozitans.

So when last week demolition work was halted at a townhouse in Victoria, Gozo, long rumoured to be the burial place of the girl, the gossip mill went into overdrive: the poor child’s remains had finally been found and someone was trying to cover it all up.

The six-year-old girl was said to have been abducted by a man who raped and murdered her and entombed her in an alcove

According to the version of the story passed down by word of mouth, the little girl was said to have been abducted by a man who raped and murdered her and entombed her in an alcove known as imramma (which in those days were commonly used as a pantry) by walling it up.

But it turns out that the only wall connection to the house being dug up in Palm Street is that the Superintendence for Cultural Heritage stopped the works because a wall believed to be from Roman times was uncovered, along with some ancient pottery.

One of the owners of the building, who insisted on remaining anonymous, confirmed that the works had been halted by heritage authorities.

A copy of the original missing person’s report filed by Modestina Cefai’s father, Giuseppe, on the same day she disappeared on August 27, 1911. Source: NAG - National Archives Gozo.

He also claimed he knew “absolutely nothing” about the rumours doing the rounds or about the girl’s story.

“I know nothing, I know nothing,” he kept repeating, with each denial punctuated with an impish giggle.

But his family, which has owned the property for some time, must have spoken about the girl’s story because what happened last week was practically a repeat of an incident on February 7, 1968.

Structural work carried out on an adjoining property had fuelled similar talk of Modestina’s remains being found and the incident eventually led to a magisterial inquiry, which established there was nothing of the sort.

The original police records of her disappearance at the Gozo National Archives show that the property on Palm Street was never even mentioned.

The first link to the house comes through the reference number for the 1968 inquiry, which has not yet been declassified.

Though the story riveted itself in the collective memory of many Gozitans, the mystery has been embellished along the years.

Besides the popular assumption that the young child had been murdered, raped and buried in a wall, when in reality nothing tangible was ever known about what really happened to her, the urban legend changed the characteristics of the girl.

An undated postcard believed to be about 100 years old, showing a young girl wearing a faldetta, much like the one Modestina would have been wearing when she disappeared. Source: National Archives - Malta.

Her name morphed from Modestina to Ċenċa and, more importantly, she became a “particularly beautiful” girl of 13 who was “rather developed for her age” – possibly to render more palatable the idea that the motivation for her abduction was sexual.

Gozitans who spoke to this newspaper, invariably on condition of anonymity, also recall their relatives telling them that the abductor disguised himself by wearing a faldetta or the more elaborate għonnella but the only reference to the garment comes from the description of what the girl herself was wearing.

What the records really say

The missing person’s report was filed by her father Giuseppe Cefai, known as Tal-Magna, at 9pm on the same day of her disappearance.

It does not say why Modestina had left home but simply that she had been missing since noon.

Seven reports follow that original entry within the space of some four months.

The first one, filed two days after she went missing, on August 29, also came from her father.

Here, he indicated the only potential suspect ever recorded, whom, he said, might have taken her to his house behind St Augustine’s Church, a stone’s throw away from the girl’s home in San Franġisk Square, Victoria.

A search was carried out on the house, but nothing turned up. Then came a series of sightings, some of which were likely fuelled by the frenzy that, elderly Gozitans say, had understandably gripped the sister island at the time.

On August 30, 1911, a woman claimed she saw the girl walking along Marsalforn road.

Another woman, a day later, reported seeing her in an area known as il-Kuljat, on the other side of the same road.

Also on August 30, a man drew the police’s attention to a bloodied rag on Għajn Tuta Street in Kerċem but when the cloth was taken to Modestina’s mother, she said it did not belong to her daughter.

A few more sightings trickled in but then relative silence until 1968 and then again last week.

The reason the story was never laid to rest is easy to understand, Gozitans agreed.

“The search, according to my grandmother, lasted for months, if not years, and the elders who were around passed down her story, trying to make sense of it in the process,” a man from Victoria said.

mmicallef@timesofmalta.com